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Torch readers, I wanted to make sure you saw the e-mail I sent out this afternoon to FIRE’s supporters announcing the launch of our newest campaign. The Give Half for Liberty campaign is an innovative new initiative for FIRE, and I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read more about it and get involved:

This game-changing campaign will help colleges reform their policies so that students and professors can enjoy freedom of expression, while also helping FIRE raise the funds necessary to continue our vital mission.

While FIRE has enjoyed a great success rate in encouraging schools to reform overbroad, vague, and easily abused policies, we need your help in getting more college administrators to really listen to our message. The truth is that if there is anything that motivates college administrators, it’s money, so colleges are likely to listen to YOU—their donors—especially when it affects their bottom line. Please help us send a clear message to America’s colleges and universities that fundamental abuses of liberty will not be tolerated and that until administrators start listening, their schools will not earn your full support.

How it works:

You care a lot about your alma mater, the college your child attends, or the school with your favorite college sports team, and as a donor you want to see that school flourish. You also are aware of the sad state of liberty on college campuses today and don’t want to see your school fall prey to the PC mafia, or worse yet, Orwellian repression. The colleges and universities you love have strayed far from their core purpose as centers of free thought and open debate and, blinded by bureaucracy, they can’t find their way back. But you can help.

Through the Give Half for Liberty campaign, you can donate half of what you usually would donate to a college or university to FIRE instead, so that we can help restore that school to the true "marketplace of ideas" it was meant to be.

Participate in our campaign and FIRE will send a letter to the school of your choice alerting administrators to the fact that they have lost half of your financial support—and that FIRE can help them reform their speech codes so they can regain that support. Donate at the $50 level and FIRE will also include our new handbook for administrators, Correcting Common Mistakes in Campus Speech Policies—a must-read for those looking to better their schools.

Money talks, and FIRE is confident that with your help we can get school administrators to listen.

Act now to help your school reach its full potential—your donation to this campaign just might be the final push administrators at your school need to restore freedom to campus. It’s time we put a price on violations ofour liberties.

I encourage you to visit FIRE’s one-of-a-kind speech code database, Spotlight: The Campus Freedom Resource, to learn about the state of liberty at more than 400 schools. If you have any questions about this campaign or about FIRE’s cases and issues, please do not hesitate to contact me at robert@thefire.org or 215-717-3473.

Sincerely,

Robert L. Shibley

Vice President, FIRE

P.S. Not a donor to your alma mater? If you still want to support FIRE’s work and send a message to your school, click here. With a donation of $50 or more we are happy to send your school a copy of our "common mistakes" handbook. Just include a comment with your donation letting us know that you would like us to send one.